watercolour painting with demonstrations, help and shared experience

Preliminary Sketch

I have been working on the drawing of the Fountain of Love commission, which has been testing to say the least. I have just included a detail here, otherwise the image would be too faint to show

The photograph of the fountain itself was included in my last post, and I may have explained that the fountain is in the grounds of Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire. The house is magnificent and is now an hotel but the grounds are run by the National Trust and are extensive.

Over the ages, Cliveden was associated with powerful women. One of the more recent being Nancy Astor, American heiress as well as an MP in Westminster, possibly the first woman MP. More recently still, Cliveden was the scene of the scandalous liaison between Christine Keeler and John Profumo, a married government minister

Again I have been balancing two commission projects, as I have just finished the sketch study of a rather lovely yacht in St.Katherine’s Dock, just to agree the composition with the client before going on the finished painting. I drew this with the help of a grid but there is something about the sleek almost feminine lines of a boat which seem to elude me, no matter how many measurements I take.

As usual the camera leaches out the colour but the essence is there. I did find it useful to make a sketch on this occasion. So many mistakes could be made and were made. At least these have been cleared out of the way, hopefully not to reappear

There is something about highly polished surfaces like plastic or metal, which don’t work well in watercolour. Give me some rough old wood or rusty iron any day, and that will look realistic enough to touch. Still, if you owned a rusty old tub, you probably wouldn’t want it commemorated in a painting

We will await the client’s comment to see whether I have got the composition right as a first step

Since the last post on the subject of New Haw Lock, I started to come off the idea of just painting the lock keeper’s cottage with the lock gates. It was a little bit cliche d. very attractive and very popular but I decided to put my sketch aside, and ran through the photographs that I had taken during the course of the morning

There were many of them on the camera and also on the phone camera which was quicker to use if anything interesting came up

These two girls came up as possibles. They had jumped off their boat whilst boyfriends did the steering, and each manned the winding mechanism of a lock gate, really putting their backs into the work. I picked the best action shots that I could find, and compiled them into a drawing

I am sorry that the drawing is faint and I hope you can make out the figures. I drew them freehand from the screen onto tracing paper, and then moved them around the paper until they looked right, I hope.

What I like about them is that their tops are bright white which will stand out against the deep shadows behind them. It was a very hot day, one of the last of our heatwave, and they are wearing baseball caps with big peaks, which we nearly all wear nowadays as they are so effective against bright sun. So no faces to draw which is for me a great bonus.

This may prove to be a bad decision. I have actually started the painting and I will not publish an interim as it is such a mess but will post the finished item, no matter how it turns out

If anyone missed my previous post, this came from one of my very rare plein air painting days next to New Haw Lock on the Wey Navigation in Surrey. An ancient waterway from the c17, it connected Guildford and then Godalming commercially with the Thames right up to 1959. It still does but only for pleasure craft nowadays.

Something I rarely find time for is painting outdoors, but recently did, with our local art group at New Haw Lock, which is one of the many locks along the Wey Navigation in Surrey. The Navigation dates from the c17, and made the river Wey navigable by cutting canals across the meanders and shallows. Thus this mix of river and canal made the Wey navigable for barge traffic from Guildford to the Thames. Amazingly this traffic by horse drawn barge went on until 1959. By then the navigation had been cut through to Godalming in the south, and had been especially useful in carrying gunpowder from nearby Chilworth Mill through to the Thames and on into the Port of London

During the c18 the Wey Navigation linked with the River Arun, and on down to the south coast, but that leg was short lived and proved uneconomic to run. That section fell into disuse, although some sections have been revived by conservationists

In the picture, one of the many lock keeper’s cottages, very charming and very paintable still. New Haw is somewhat underrated and is easily missed when driving by.

We found shade to sit, as the day was hot and became hotter towards midday. The morning was enough for me, so for about 2-3 hours during which time, I worked out my composition, and just sketched putting in the shadows which of course changed quickly. Photography helps the sketch book and I recorded several stages. It is my intention to finish the painting in my “studio”, but for the moment need to finish my Alhambra painting

I shall look forward to painting the New Haw lock. This is a typical Surrey scene and a typical Surrey cottage. I will attach my drawing. I regretted afterwards only taking an A3 pad which didn’t give me enough space but at home i can use a half sheet which will enable me hopefully to include the lock in its entirety

Now all I have to do is to decide whether or not to include the foreground tree which obscures much of the cottage but nevertheless provides some interesting lights and darks

From the photograph, I have made a fairly quick sketch in black and white, just to give myself a tonal guide for when I attempt the actual painting

This is not intended to be an architectural drawing of any merit. The actual painting will, I trust, be better, but even then the detailing of the architecture is such that with the best will in the world, some simplification will have to be permissible. I am more interested at this stage in working out the light and dark areas. Hopefully the finished work will reflect the dazzling floor of the courtyard, and also suggest the intense heat from outside. It was about 35c whilst we were wandering around, but we were fine in the shaded areas. It must have been much the same for the original owners who built the citadel, and of course it would get much hotter in July/August

As I’m writing this in south-east England, the temperature is around 32c with no prospect of rain in the foreseeable future. It seems strange to be nostalgic for our unreliable climate of yesteryear, when the possibility of rain was always a worry when planning an event.

I didn’t use ink this time. I used Paynes Grey watercolour which I quite like. It is underrated, I think, and gives a pleasant blue/black shade to a sketch which I find preferable.

I have exaggerated the bleached out look of the arches on the other side of the courtyard. Whether I will get away with doing that in colour, remains to be seen. The small round fountain in the foreground does nothing for me and will be left out of the finished work

My poor sales record for the year received a boost at the week-end. I delivered successfully the Docklands Commission, and that will be going out to Sweden next month. The same day, I sold Bosham Panorama from my website and that is being collected next week. So very pleased about that.

It meant that I had to rush round and frame my latest painting of Bosham Creek, so that I had something to show on Saturday at the Railings Exhibition in Pirbright. That though is a happy problem

I have been away for the last five days or so, in Spain with perfect temperatures of around 20 with gentle sunshine plus sea air. I’m back now to something like 12 and wet so feeling cold. Yesterday I rescued my garden and allotment. Today I am catching up on other things like my blog

I started last time with an indistinct photograph of Bosham Harbour, which I have done so many times, but this time in evening colours. Before I went away I prepared some sketches and finally decided on the one which I have illustrated.

I have kept the distinctive distant shore line without much detail. That broach spire identifies the village of Bosham unmistakably. From my archives I have included a different boat, which will add something to the foreground. There were beached boats in the photograph which in my opinion did little, although I did include a couple of these to close off the side of the painting to he right.

I think I will use a mixture of violet, yellow and brown for the painting. I am more interested in how the colours work, than in the actual image, so the result may look like an impression of Bosham rather than a record of the harbour itself.

Before leaving this subject, I will mention that I am setting up an exhibition in Leatherhead, in the theatre on Monday morning. Leatherhead is a town about twenty miles distant, so new territory, which is always exciting

Coming back to the Bosham painting, I will finish with another image, which is the basic line drawing transferred to watercolour paper. We are now ready to paint.

This is my rough sketch of Goathland Railway Station, used amongst other things, for the model for Hogsmeade Station on the Hogwartes Express, says he, knowing virtually nothing about Harry Potter

I moved the composition out on both sides from the original photograph. I managed to find some more material on the Internet, not much, but the little I found was helpful. On one side there is a siding used for what looks like, Pullman coaches. I have the colour at least, which seems to be mostly cream with green

On the left hand side, I was able to complete what looked like a railway shed. It was more or less what I guessed it should be, but it was good to have it confirmed.

Now comes the tedious part, as you have heard me say before, of transferring the sketch onto watercolour paper, as a line drawing, hopefully improving the accuracy as I go. Some little while before I get round to that I expect

Some news about exhibitions. I finished the show at the Guildford Institute and sold one painting on the very last day. It was the one called “Bikes and Canals in Amsterdam” which I was pleased about, as this was rather a different subject for me. One painting is not remarkable, I know, but the Institute is not a busy place like a hospital, for instance, but I like showing there as it enjoys local prestige, and gets you talked about.

A couple of days ago, I was approached by the theatre in Leatherhead, which is a town about twenty miles from where I live. They are opening an art gallery for local artists, and wondered if I would support them, which I am doing. I am taking a small section of wall space as a trial, and will be showing there from 1st to 14th May

It should be an interesting experiment. I haven’t tried the Leatherhead area before. The theatre also draws from the town of Dorking, and the surrounding villages, so I remain cautiously optomistic, as always. The gallery organiser supports the exhibition with local publicity as well as social media. Some of this activity is directed towards private galleries in the area, and again not a segment of the market that I have approached before.

I’ve transferred the drawings to watercolour paper now, and kept them as line drawings only, which is why they are faint. I have assembled the individual drawings that I had and strengthened, I hope , the composition into a more horizontal arrangement.

Since posting this drawing, I have liberally spattered with masking fluid, around the lower regions of the horses to look like, again hopefully, the spray that the lead horse was throwing up

I have put on a base coat of colour. A band of pthalo blue modified with cobalt for a sky colour, followed by a pink horizon, followed by a ground colour the same as the sky. For the pink, I have used something I bought long ago from SAA called Vermillion Hue, a colour outside of my experience. It was described as very good as a warm grey when mixed with Cobalt, and a very good shadow colour on snow. Likewise, without the Cobalt it can provide a warm glow. No snow here I know, but plenty of water and grey horses. The horses in the photograph were just catching the light on one side from a very watery sun

So this is an experiment and could fail, but I am hoping to catch this pink light on the horses, if I can

Now that my exhibition entry is complete, I can start to look at painting something for pure pleasure, whilst at the same time, having something very different in my portfolio, knowing that local exhibitions will be cropping up during the summer.

Horses are something of a favourite. I rode for many years. Nothing very serious, just hacking out but still exhilarating. Christmas rides over the Downs were the best, with a couple of long gallops thrown in. Some parts of the ride were on sandstone, so sandy tracks to gallop along which just went on and on.

My son and I used to go to the north-east several years running, and go post-trail riding spread over the week. Quite hairy galloping across the moors, but the horses were like goats, so you just let them take you

So after a while, you form an affection for horses, whether they are ponies or drays. In fact I loved watching the big dray horses delivering beer in certain parts of London, especially Wandsworth, home of Youngs Brewery which had a team of drays up to the time they closed down not that long ago. Now I just enjoy looking at them and taking photographs, hopefully to get some shots good enough to paint.

I am getting one or two different sketches together, hopefully to create something dramatic, perhaps even wild-looking. I haven’t finished my deliberations yet, but for the moment will just show the sketches which I’ve prepared so far, which might change as I go along

I have interrupted the study of the bridge over the Basingstoke canal, as I have been lucky enough to be given a commission for a house portrait. This is the first this year and it is only December. Last year I was doing something from the web site every other month.

This will be a gift for a couple moving after 40 years in this lovely house, and a painting will make a lovely memento. I do always feel privileged to be entrusted with this sort of task, and naturally will give the job my very best attention

This will be presented by another family member, and will be a surprise for the couple concerned. My job will be to make it a pleasant one

Crazy time of the year, of course and many things happening, year end, which I am involved in, so I am working on the project during spare moments. Luckily I am not under much pressure to complete to a deadline

So far I have prepared a working sketch with tonal work, which will help me place the details in my head and also let me know where the shadows are. I will flash the sketch up next, so you can see where I have got to. Next, the tedious bit, moving the drawing onto watercolour paper, but it has to be done

By way of a PS, we had our annual art exhibition at the week-end. By we I mean the Pirbright Art Club, and I am pleased to say that I sold “Salt Mills at Trapani, Sicily”. The painting is somewhere in the archives if you wanted to check it out. So, after a very slow start, sales have not been too bad during the second half of the year

Again, because of the importance of the task, I have used a grid to get architectural details in the right place, I hope

I love house portraits, and am looking forward to getting back to this one

From the photograph on the last post, trying to make sense of the detail, some of which can be dispensed with, otherwise the composition will become a hopeless jumble

The bicycles, obviously need attention. I have left off the three at the back, as quite honestly, it is difficult to make out their shapes in the photograph, so a drawing would be difficult. I started with the bike in the foreground and have attempted some detail. I will probably go into more detail when I have transferred the image onto watercolour paper. The nice thing about bicycles in Amsterdam, is that they are simple, as bikes used to be. Handlebar with no gears that I can see, a bell which is welcome, a sit-up-and-beg frame and a parcel rack. Purely functional and fit for purpose. I can imagine a brisk trade in second-hand bikes, as I am told, several thousand have to be fished out of the canals every year

I will put in progressively less detail as I work through the pile.

Houseboats and reflections will help. I have extended the picture slightly to the right and have included an extra small boat. This takes the bicycles out of centre stage

The buildings at the rear of the picture, I think I will fade out slightly. Towards the left I have left a space for misty light which will work down the page. I will just have to make this up as I go along, and hope for the best. One should plan with watercolour, but sometimes you have to let instinct take control, and cross your fingers

The tedious part next, transferring the drawing and finishing it off onto watercolour paper. It has to be done

By way of a postscript, I don’t think that I have ever commented on the number of visits/views that I get each month. I don’t get an enormous traffic but certainly enough, and spread across all the continents, which is nice. This month I have had an amazing number of hits from Norway, which is nice. A staggering quantity, more than the UK and United States added together, which is just unprecedented. Thank you, Norway. I hope I continue to hold your interest